Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In Sophocles’ *Oedipus Tyrannus*, once the Corinthian messenger and the old herdsman make the birth undeniable, Jocasta rushes into the palace in silence. A messenger later reports: she fled to her marriage chamber, called on Laius’s dead bed and the double bond of husband and son, and hanged herself. Oedipus bursts in, finds her hanging, cuts her down, and then blinds himself with the pins of her dress. Catalogue this as the queen’s suicide alone—the tragic hinge between discovery and Oedipus’s self-blinding—distinct from the investigation play and from Homer’s Epicaste notice in which the mother hangs while the son stays king.